Brighter Than Sunshine
by Kilonji
Summary: Lurve, Bleach style. Minor spoilers. 6. He was looking for a fight and found a budding obsession. 7. There is still such a thing as a happy ending. 8. Sometimes jigsaw pieces from two different puzzles still fit perfectly.
1. Chapter 1

He had heard stories about it before. In times of turmoil when it seemed that the world could come apart at any moment, a man and a woman overtaken with despair would find comfort in one another, joining their bodies in a feeble attempt to fight off inevitable doom. Strangely, these stories never went over what happened _after_, when the danger had passed and all there was left was awkward silence.

If this wasn't awkward silence, he didn't know how else to define it. It was morning, and her head was on his chest. Her arm was thrown over his side. He had awoken with his hand on her waist.

And oh yeah, they were both naked.

"I know you're awake," he said.

She moved a little.

"Get off me, will you?"

"Turn your head," she replied.

"It's not like I didn't look before," he said. Because he had. And, as he recalls, albeit uncomfortably, liked what he saw.

"I don't _care_," she said. "Close your eyes."

He let out a groan and obeyed. The weight shifted off his chest and he felt the bed lift as she got up. When he finally opened his eyes, she was putting on her underwear, her fine back to him. "It was going to happen sooner or later, wasn't it?" he asked her shoulder blades.

She sat back on the bed, dark head disappearing into the folds of her shirt.

"Well?"

"Do you honestly believe that?" she asked, her voice razor sharp. Her head had resurfaced, but she still did not look at him.

Of all the people in the world, she was the one who could make a question as effective as a sword to the gut. Here was the crux of it. Not what they had done, but _why_ they had done it. How it had come this far. Why it was her and not someone else.

He hated her in more way than he could count. For breathing life into him, for taking it away when she left him, every time she left him. For being there when he didn't want her to be, for being so. . . _inconvenient_. And for making him crave her. And not refusing him when, after all this time, that feeling crept over him and all he could do was reach for her. Let's not forget that. "I do believe it," he said.

Now her shoulders were shaking. _ Crying?_ Oh God, no. "Rukia," he started.

"I'm sorry," she said.

This was not what he expected. Had she said, "It was a mistake," he would not have been surprised. But "I'm sorry?" He reached for her. "Don't be. I'm not."

"I know you're not. I'm not sorry about _that _either," she said.

"Then what?"

When she turned to him there were no tears in her eyes. "All this time, we would have been doing that. I'm sorry I waited," she grinned.

He threw a pillow at her. "Asshole. Why did you wait?"

"I didn't _know_," she said. "Otherwise I would have jumped you a long time ago."

"Oh," he said, letting his head hit the other pillow. He lay there in silence, staring at her sitting on the edge of his bed. She was flushed, as if she realized the meaning of what she had just said and was wondering if she could take it back. "Does it mean anything? To you?" He blurted.

She turned away. "Of all the dumbass questions. Why can't you just ask me what you really want to know?"

"Do you?"

She looked at him. "As much as you do," she said.

The sun flooded the room with light. They stared at each other for a good long time.

Love, in their case, means never having to admit it. Not in specific words, anyway.

* * *

**A/N:** A little OOC here, but let's face it: It'll never actually happen. They'd just as soon eat glass.  



	2. Chapter 2

The first thing Abarai Renji will tell you about Arisawa Tatsuki is that she takes his breath away. Literally. The hit came from nowhere; he barely had time to voice his shock before his ass hit the ground. And then there she was, hovering over him, hands on her hips, a wide grin on her face. She's made progress, that's clear. But Yoruichi said she would. "She already is very skilled with her hands," she winked at Renji. "As a fighter anyway. But I imagine the curiosity _you_ have about her hands involves something else."

It's only now that Renji stops to wonder if he'd been that obvious from the beginning. He takes the hand Tatsuki offers him, lets her pull him to his feet. He stumbles close to her intentionally. He can smell the sweat and deodorant on her and wonders why the aroma so very sweet to him. Then she shoves him away. "Let's go again," she says.

"No, Arisawa-san, it's hot down here. Let's rest a bit."

She frowns just a little, then nods. He loves how she does that. He loves the neck that head nods on. He loves the eyes in that head. He loves. . .

He shakes his head, looks at her. She's staring at him funny. "What?" he says.

"Nothing," she scowls, an edge coming into her voice.

He smiles at her. He knows her impatience, knows the urgency of her desire. She has a goal to achieve. And he knows better than anyone else what it is to have ambition lick at your feet, hunger gnaw at you soul. It's that fire that draws him to her, he knows.  
It's also how he felt her coming before even Rukia did, that day. They had not been at that place called school in days. Ichigo had been busy with the vizards, Rukia and Inoue passing back and forth between Soul Society, and he had been training with Sado. But on that terrible day they lost Inoue, they all agreed to remain together, no matter what. For Inoue's sake.

And then Tatsuki came looking for her. She arrived on the doorstep of the Urahara shouten with fire in hr eyes and a clear impatience with their fumbling excuses. The reiatsu she gave off was faint, but hot like a sword that had sat in a fire for days. Ichigo turned red. He could not lie. Sado and Rukia _would_ not, and remained silent. Renji was the one who told her. And he told her the truth, preparing himself for womanly tears or at least uncontrolled panic.

Instead, she crossed her arms. "So how do we get her back?" And then came the blazing strength of he reiatsu, rising with her ire, telling them all she would not be put off. It was so strong that it attracted the shady store owner and his feline compatriot. Yoruichi looked her up and down and declared her "trainable." That was how it began, her weeks of training. Renji had first decided to keep a distance. The human girl made him feel weird and off-balance. But little by little, curiosity claimed him, and he went first to watch, then to train with her. She is strong, not unlike Rukia, but utterly unlike Rukia.

She is probably the least feminine creature he has ever met and that's saying something, knowing Yoruichi. Her single-minded drive is amazing to him. He likes her easy style and agile form.

Before he could say he liked _everything_ about her, he knew he loved her. Which was difficult for him.

He had no idea how to approach her.

And he would not ask for help. Really, now, what would anyone say? Ichigo would laugh, Rukia would snicker, and Sado would silently nod. Sado was not much of a talker.

So Renji settled for remaining close. For now, it is enough. In class, they referred to it as "courtly love." Perhaps later, he'll gather the nerve to make it into something else.

Sitting next to her now, he knows she is strong and getting stronger. He worries a little that it still won't be enough, and there is no question of keeping her from battle when it comes. It won't be possible. But that does not matter right now.

Where Renji loves, he protects.

* * *

**A/N**: I know a lot of people don't really consider this pairing crack anymore. We all want to see Renji knocked on his ass by Tatuski. Because we all know she can do it. Not just that, but _damn_, won't the arguing alone just be _awesome_? 


	3. Chapter 3

He had told her not to come.

She knows that he knows better than that.

But it doesn't matter. She's scared off his would-be bodyguards with less than a look. Her own former bodyguard is thankfully elsewhere, probably stewing at the indignity of being yet again set aside. But she does understand, Yoruichi believes, the importance of her absence.

It's been decades since she has been alone with the white haired man.

He sputters a little, fighting it for her sake, eyes closed as the frail body convulses. He hates her to see him this way.

She knows this and does not care. She lays her hand on his chest despite his feeble attempt to brush her away, feels her own power sharpening itself and digging deep. In his lungs is an angry monster. It snarls at her. Her eyes narrow. "Not tonight," she tells it. It responds by snapping at her hand, producing a wet cough from the white haired man. He holds the handkerchief to his mouth, eyes watering with more than the lack of air.

She shakes her head. Her power uncoils and strikes at the monster, once, twice, one more time before it is still. The white haired man falls back on his bed, gulping the air as if it is trying to escape him. Tears roll down his cheeks. "I'm not at my best today, Yoruichi-chan," he finally sighs.

"Your worst is better than the best of most others, Juu-chan." she smiles at him.

His breathing slows, he closes his eyes. "I don't--"

"I don't care what you want," she says. "I don't care that you're weak. I don't care that you want to give up. I forbid it."

"You can't let me rest?"

"I won't let you rest."

"May I be so insolent as to ask why?" He isn't exasperated, but close.

"Look at me when you're being an asshole."

"Yoru--"

She glares at him.

He sighs. "Yoruichi. A lot has changed. I'm not the same. You are not the same."

"That's rich, to throw me in it. Say it, Ukitake-taichou. 'I feel old and I want to sleep forever because it's too hard to let myself want anything else. Go be with Kisuke, he's the one you left me for.'"

"I wasn't going to say that. Woman, don't you know how cruel you are, to berate a dying man?"

"_You're not dying_." Her voice is venomous and her eyes are ablaze.

"Yoruichi, we all die." He raises his hand, lays it gingerly on hers. "It's the way things are."

"Fuck how things are. You are not dying, you will not die. You will not go where I can't follow. I will not let you go." She will not wail, she will not rend her flesh. She's too used to having her way for such things. "Swear it."

_I won't,_ his mind says softly. "I swear," his voice says. The sun is coming up, dark and old as he feels. But she will not leave when it comes, not this time. She will stay whether he wants it or not. He almost hates himself for wanting it.

She looks at him hard. "Damned liar." But he knows she doesn't believe her own words. Then she kisses him, tastes the faintness of his own blood on his tongue. It's strangely erotic to him, and it's softer than he expected it to be.

Soft as his mind whispering to him that he's just made a promise he'll eventually break.


	4. Chapter 4

Sometimes she wonders how he's doing.

At first, sometimes was pretty much all the time. Did he have a warm place to sleep? Was he eating enough? Was he still smiling? Even while she was wading through the sea of paperwork left behind by the desertion of three captains and the critical wounding of three other captains and two vice-captains.

Her own captain among them. She no longer calls him little or young. There is an oldness to his eyes that defies belief. That hadn't been there before. The shadows under his eyes tell a story that makes her want to weep and hold him like a baby every time she sees him, to smooth his hair and tell him everything will be alright. Even if she doesn't know that for certain.

It is this oldness that is so deeply set in him that caused this mountain of paperwork to collapse on her and seriously put a dent in the time she could spend thinking about Gin. Hitsugaya-taichou had volunteered but was understandably unable to follow through.

Well, not necessarily unable. That was Rangiku's doing. Even after Unohona had released him, Rangiku was hesitant to let him throw himself into his work. What good would that do him, with his pride fractured and his heart completely broken? Let him watch over Momo if it made him feel better. At least she was still here to watch over. So for a while, Rangiku was in the habit of running her captain out of his own office.

Which left her alone with the paperwork and errant thoughts of the delinquent Ichimaru Gin. Ichimaru Gin, who told her he was sorry.

_Sorry for what? Liar._

She wants it to be a lie. All of it. But she knows better. He left here on Aizen's coattails, with no second thoughts and only one look back, with some strange kind of regret on his face. He had chosen. And she is not what he wants. If he ever wanted her, it was not enough to keep him here and on the straight-and-narrow. Perhaps that's what stings the most, she thinks. She has worth to him. Just not enough. That was the conclusion she came to while she went over the third division's nightly report several weeks after the Aizen departure. From that point on, she had closure on the subject but no peace. She is strong enough to let him go. She decided to gradually work at the empty space he'd left in her. She can easily find other men to play with. She will seal off that part of herself, brick by brick, until the only thing she feels for Ichimaru Gin is indifference. Even as the sun sets over her laying on the couch in the tenth division office, dreaming of white hands in her hair and soft pink lips on hers, that low voice saying her name, over and over, and the dizzying kiss that comes after and seems to go on forever.

But she still wonders how he's doing.

* * *

A/N: The dynamic between Matsumoto Rangiku and Ichimaru Gin completely facinates me. Part of it is the idea of how bonds formed as children, no matter what happens, can stand the test of time and even outright betrayal. The other part, which I did not elaborate on here, is the idea--actually the firmly held belief I have--that Gin does love Rangiku, more than anyone might imagine. My theory is that Gin will not survive the final battle, not just because he will not raise his sword to her even when she has proven she will raise hers to him, but also because he would never allow anyone else, even Aizen, to harm her. 

I was listening to a little music while re-reading and editing this one, and there are several songs that really fit the mood I feel their relationship has. One is Sting's "A Thousand Years." The other is Joan Osborne's "Ladder." Give them a listen and you'll see what I mean.


	5. Chapter 5

Before long they have settled into a pattern. A rhythm, really. All the details are insignificant to them. All that matters is that sometimes he'll look at her, or she'll look at him, and each feels like they'll _spontaneously combust_ if their hands aren't all over each other in the next fifteen seconds.

Which is completely inconvenient when you're sneaking around.

Neither of them have mastered the art of the speedy but inconspicuous exit, and they are rarely alone. It's all too new then for either of them to think logically enough to devise some kind of signal, some kind of sign that would tell the other "come away with me, I want to stick my tongue down your throat" without alerting—and subsequently freaking out—everyone else.

So it has come down to developing a schedule.

After school, on the rooftop, heavy petting.

Sometime after dinner when it is dark, in the park, swinging, and more heavy petting.

And less often, in his dark room, long after midnight and a while before dawn, they'll have hot teenage sex and then lay together, memorizing each other's bodies. She has a mole just under her left breast he likes to kiss. She enjoys tickling the crook behind his knee and the giggle it invariably draws from him. She never pictured him as the giggling type.

When he is inside her and she can feel his muscles straining not to finish before she does, she looks up at him—sometimes down—and admires the smooth white skin and the soft pink lips bared over even white teeth, and the flutter of the eyelashes because it weirds him out to do it with his eyes open. He is utterly old-fashioned that way, another thing that surprises her.

While his eyes are closed he pictures her face in the sunlight, her wide and open mouth—he knows it's open because she is much noisier than he expected her to be—and her hands clutching at some place on his body, she doesn't care where, she's going to hold on for dear life because, well, she _wants_ to. They never finish together, and he always says her name and it clashes with the raw moan that comes either soon before or soon after he says it. Then she'll lean her head into his chest and tell him, in a hoarse whisper, that she loves him. He never says it back to her because he is certain she knows. She always knew.

And the next day, they'll glow, walking wherever with their friends and comrades, feet away from each other but bound, caught up in an endless tongue-twisting affair.

Their friends are varying degrees of sharp. "What's _up_ with them?" one will demand of another when the lovers are out of earshot.

One will shrug. Another will grimace and try to change the subject. The last will chuckle. "Isn't it obvious?"

"No, what?"

"They're _doing_ it."

"They are so not!"

The other shakes her head. "Look at them. Does that remind you of anything?" The tip of her tongue pokes out from the rosebud lips, and he is reminded of the last time—more recently than you think—he tasted that tongue.

He blushes. "Oh jeez. That's just creepy." He gazes in amazement at the chestnut-haired girl with the barrettes and the dark haired boy with the icy blue eyes. They are utterly mismatched, he thinks, but then he looks at the girl who just exposed them, and knows _they_ are too.

"Ichigo, don't be such a prude." She is amused and saddened at the same time. Rukia knows that once you start playing that game, the rules go right out the window. She wonders if they've figured that out yet. But then she catches Ichigo looking at her, and knows if she doesn't have her hands on him in the next five seconds, she's going to _spontaneously combust_. "Hey, could you come to the broom closet with me? Sensei told me she needed more chalkboard erasers."

He looks at her, and the blush goes much redder. "Okay."

* * *

**A/N**: Those two? I'm shocked, I tell you. _Shocked_.

Not.


	6. Chapter 6

He wants to kick their asses. Every last spineless pansy. Saying the fourth squad captain was "scary." Dumbasses. They've sullied his pride and he intended, in coming here, to set the record straight. Put the woman in her place. She's no fighter. But when he entered her office, he was bowled over by the peace that dwelled within it in the form of a tiny, delicate female. Instead of telling her off, he let her make him tea and sat cross-legged across from her in stunned silence. He's put himself in a bad position and knows it. Therefore, since he can't go after her, he thinks, he'll take the frustration out on his chicken-shit men.

When he reconsiders his desire, it dawns on him that the task will take a while, and besides, he'd be bored out of his mind after wiping the floor two or three of them. Not to mention the fact that Yachiru will demand her cut, as always, and that usually causes the need for a chase and damn, being a captain should mean your opponents have the fucking sense not to run from you.

"If you keep brooding like that, Ken-chan, your face will stick that way," the woman says in a voice that is singsong, but somehow not.

Only one person is allowed to call him that, and she ain't here. He glares at the lips the voice came from and imagines them bleeding. Or tries to. They are curved upward, not a smile, not a frown, just a simple conveyance of non-aggression. Peaceful-like. He's sure those lips have been bloodied before, but he is also sure that bloodying them comes with one hell of a retribution.

For the placid face and the calm, controlled voice, he's seen the steel behind those gray eyes. He wonders why no one bothers to say anything about it—damn, he's lost his train of thought again.

Oh, yeah. He wants to kick their asses—she's got pretty hair. Pretty as a raven's wing. Shiny, like blackened, crusted blood. Yeah, pretty like that.

_Okay_, he thinks, _that's enough_. He stands to go.

"Leaving so soon?" she asks him.

"Uh, yeah, got stuff to do."

"Come back whenever you like," she says, and clearly means it. The steel in her eyes waves at him. It has no fear. _She_ has no fear.

His stomach lurches and he nods, awkward as he's ever been. As he walks away from the fourth division compound, he concedes that Unohona Retsu is indeed scary.

And kinda beautiful.

By the time he gets home, he decides he'll go back tomorrow for a rematch.


	7. Chapter 7

No matter how much older she gets, he always sees her as she was. In a way. The dirty baseball cap and shorts are gone, and for a while she let her hair grow. He complimented her on it, of course, but in the end it seemed to make her self-conscious and he was horrified one day to come home home and find three inches of it in clumps on the bathroom floor. She only looked at him and shrugged, but the red in her eyes told it all. She had wanted to be someone different.

And failed.

He did not acknowledge the tears that were for the most part long gone. He merely touched what was left of the hair he considered lovely simply because it was on her head, looked at her. _It doesn't matter,_ he willed her to know. _You are still you._

And he is still himself. She is the only female in whose presence he has ever felt awkward. On their second official date he tripped over his own ankles. The day he proposed he dropped the ring and spent a good five minutes on the floor, under tables, looking for it while she laughed, telling him he didn't need it, didn't need to even ask, and what the hell took him so long? When he stood up with the slightly dirty ring in his hand, he strode back to her, aware that his hand was shaking, and ended up frozen before her. She took the ring from his shaking hand and put it on her finger, then stood up on her chair, so they were eye to eye. No, actually she was standing over him and had her knees bent, somewhat. When she kissed him she tasted like iced tea, and until the day he dies he'll think of sugar and lemon every time he remembers tasting her lips.

Even now, he feels he must be careful with her. He doesn't think her delicate. He thinks himself too strong, and if he tries to hold onto her too tight she may very well break. But he thinks that about everything. Their garbage can is a graveyard of items he'd held onto too tightly. Glasses, dolls, his failed attempt to build a ship in a bottle. He is clumsy. This is the price he paid for the strength with which he would protect her, their home, their family.

The baby he would not hold until she was three days old, terrified he would drop her. But then her mother refused to be put off any longer and shoved her into her father's arms while he sat tensely in the living room chair reading a tattered copy of Dr. Spock. "You have to learn," she said coldly. "I won't do it alone." And he looked down at the sleepy infant, marveling at her smooth brown skin and the milky scent of her breath and fell in love again. Then he looked at her mother and knew, by the look in her eyes, that she was falling, too. They both fell so hard that they made three more babies in five years. That creature he does not think of as delicate had a pelvis made of whalebone. Or so her brother said, before she hurled a vase at his head from her hospital bed after child number four. And she did not miss. Even in her fury, Karin is beautiful.

This is it, he knows. Forty years of the kind of love that they can't recreate in Hollywood movies. The kind that is rooted in comfortable silence and the occasional knockdown, drag-out fight that results in makeup sex that can go on until sunrise. He recalls the last fight had something to do with their elder son and a drum set, but can't remember what side of the battle he was on. It didn't matter, really, because he always managed to find a compromise, and that time it was the drum set being in the garage. And Karin spent six months with cotton in her ears, her face a cross between rueful capitulation and radiant pride. _That's ours out there_, her smile told him. And she was beautiful.

She still is, even now, lying next to him, tiny laugh lines framing her mouth, and her hair streaked with a brilliant gray. When she nestles close to him, he pulls the blankets to her chin and sometimes she'll whisper his name. "Yastora." And she is eleven again, the first time he remembers seeing her. But back then he only thought she was cute, in a best-friend's-little-sister kind of way.

Now she is something entirely different. The years have passed and the children are gone, leading their own lives and letting their own reiatsu radiate in the world. The only evidence he'll leave behind of himself and the woman he married. And he knows for fact when he leaves this world, he will go with no regrets. He'll only miss the little girl who kicked him hard, and bide his time until he can see her again.

**A/N**: My blood sugar's through the roof after that one, but damn. Chad is the kindest, sweetest guy ever. I can't imagine the romantic angst with him for some reason and I don't think he gets the affection he so richly deserves. As for Karin, I know she's the type to let him know his worth.


	8. Chapter 8

With the power he stole from her came little pieces of what he understood to be her heart. Not enough to affect his own feelings or actions, just enough to make what was a curious thing a complete mystery. In his dreams he would push a dark lock of hair out of his eyes while running behind another girl, straight and tall, dressed like a boy, with flaming red hair. If Ichigo wasn't absolutely certain they were in danger, he would have let the pure joy take him over. After all, they _were_ having fun, really. When he would wake and gaze upon the uniform and the frown he could not reconcile the running girlchild with the the cold, haughty shinigami. That was how he was certain the dreams were not memories.

In exchange for the power she gave him came the humbling sense that she, of all people, had made an error. Several, really. She was unused to making mistakes. Had her brother known, he would have been irritated with her apparent lack of good judgment. She would lay awake at night pondering how she would explain herself when it was all over. But every scenario ended the same and if she were the type, she would have wept at night, every night. The only thing that seemed to soothe her was in the morning he would roll out of bed, the same mess he always was, and she knew for certain that while she was flawed, at least Rukia was not _human_. When she considered the boy in front of her, however, she had to concede that there were worse things to be.

They got on like gangbusters. Long before she allowed herself into his bed, he was inside her, yelling, insulting and praising her at the same time. _We fit_, he said. _We fit_. _Thank you, _she said back

They were always clashing. He hated her will, hated her face, hated her smug intelligence. And loved the whole package in ways he did not think possible. He refused to say it aloud, though.

"Would you change anything?" she asks.

"Would you?"

She nestles closer into the crook of his arm, old enough to know better, but with enough of him in her not to care. His hand runs lazily down her thigh and his head is blissfully clear.

_Of course not,_ they both swear silently.


End file.
